


Atlas

by coeurastronaute



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-31 05:03:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17842988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coeurastronaute/pseuds/coeurastronaute
Summary: just a series of loosely connected sketches





	Atlas

_That we may fall in love_   
_Every time we open up our eyes_   
_I guess space, and time_   
_Takes violent things, angry things_   
_And makes them kind._

It was a Tuesday.

The bold black print in her planner told her so, and so Lena Luthor gave it no thought at all. Absolutely nothing life-changing or even enjoyable happened on a Tuesday. There was no reason to give it a second thought. Why would she? She’d lived through roughly fourteen hundred Tuesdays already in her life.

In the back of the car on the way to work, the CEO gazed through the tinted window at the grey morning, where the streetlights lingered on longer than normal, casting the unnatural orange color on the cloud-filtered light that tried to welcome and wake the city. Steam coughed through manhole covers, and filled the air with the exhaust from cars, but Lena didn’t see anything at all. Instead, she caught herself lodged in that space of thinking and not seeing, where her senses shut down, and she retreated into her thoughts while the quiet and mundane morning, with its usual sounds and scenes ran along without her active involvement.

For a moment, a small, insignificant moment that lasted perhaps two blocks and a red light, Lena clenched her jaw and sighed as she let herself think of who she was and where she found herself. She didn’t have time to feel slighted by her lot in life, and she envied people who could simply walk away. Her life might have been easier if she didn’t have a compulsion to fix things, or perhaps, if she wasn’t a masochist.

Only an absolute sadist would hold so much pain, would swallow it and lock it up in their chest so that it felt like it was a living, breathing monster that now shared their body. Lena had a demon that slithered its way through her ribs, gripping with slender fingers the cage she kept tightly locked. The guilt, the pain, the betrayal, the hurt, the anguish, the abuse, the fear, the loss, it fed him and kept him up at night so that sometimes, as crazy as it sounded, she could almost feel him swirling between her lungs with each breath, weaving between each lobe and tightening his jaws on her veins and arteries, tugging and pulling at the muscle fibers of her shoulders. But with a steady hand, she would press a palm against her heart and take a deep breath and lock him away again.

It was safest to keep those things inside. So she locked up her mother, the one she never knew, and she put her picture in a tiny gold oval frame on the mantle in the little home that this demon frequented. And Lena put her father and her stepmother, and she locked them in a box and she did not open it. And more recently, she found her brother tearing her apart, feeding this beasts need to absolutely break her apart.

In the back of the car on the way to the office, Lena Luthor sat perfectly still and closed her eyes before pressing her palm against her chest and putting all of that away for the day, for it was Tuesday, and the only remarkable thing that happened on Tuesdays were conference calls. She could handle the mundane. She revelled in it because it lulled the monsters to sleep.

No one could ever know how afraid she was of being consumed by the evil that she felt inside her. No one would ever notice it. If anything, all anyone would see would be the quiet calm of a woman on her way to work.

Lena opened her eyes as they pulled up to her building, the one with her name on it, the one that she single-handedly saved or was in the process of saving. The pride was no match for the beast, and so she didn’t even bother to feel it.

“Good morning, Ms. Luthor,” her assistant greeted her as she exited the elevator on the top floor. “I’ve got the files for the conference call at ten on your desk, a few bits of mail to be addressed, a meeting with the lawyer after lunch, and the driver is set to be here at three to take you to the opening of the new factory on the other side of town.”

There weren’t off days. Lena should have had six assistants, but she trusted so few people, that she did not want anyone other than Jess. It meant that she was often kicking out her assistant from the office on days that she didn’t actually need her, or at least trying. She was, perhaps, the best paid assistant of all time though.

“Could you have some aspirin brought in,” Lena asked as she handed over her coat. “And–”

“They were out of blueberry scones this morning.”

“I wasn’t going to–”

“I grabbed you one with sprinkles,” Jess smiled, swapping the small diner bag for the coat that cost more than her car.

Lena smiled to herself and took the bag begrudgingly, happy that someone allowed her to have human vices.

And that was how she found herself spending the morning. She answered her emails, and she perused the files, and she had the call about projections and offerings on stocks, and she looked into their Q2 rollout of the green initiative, and she met with the group for scholarships and internships.

It was Jess who always seemed to remind Lena that such a thing as lunch existed. From where she sat, the assistant could never quite understand her boss. She worked for Lena Luthor for an entire year, and wasn’t sure she knew anything about her. Quiet and forceful, proud and strong, Jess idolized Lena, though she was never sure how she even got out of bed, let alone set out on a campaign to fix the world.

So the assistant kept her fed. It was the hardest job of all.

“If you’re going to make it to the opening of the factory, you have to leave soon.”

Lena picked at the bits of fruit in the bowl on her desk absently, scrolling along at something on her computer, jotting notes every so often during the pauses. It took her assistant clearing her throat a second time to pull her back to reality.

“The factory is going to be the turning point for us,” Lena decided as she crunched another piece of cantaloupe.

“I’ll get your bag.”

“Don’t bother. I’ll be back after,” she dismissed the suggestion.

“No, you won’t. You are going home for the evening.”

“I’ll just work from home.”

Lena finished jotting her notes as she waited for her assistant to push her out the door and to the waiting car. The truth of it was, Lena was very excited about her factory. She was very excited to escape, or at least try to escape, the dirty, mean thoughts her brother and father planted in her head. No one wanted to believe her, and she wasn’t sure she could believe her own motives, but little things helped her keep on track.

“Ms. Luthor,” Jess interrupted a pause in the thoughts pouring into the notebook.

“I’m ready when the car is, Jess,” Lena muttered without looking up.

“You have two guests from the FBI who would like a few minutes of your time.”

Sheepishly, the assistant stood near the door as Lena looked up and furrowed. She closed her notebook and mulled over what it could be about. Unfortunately, with a last name like Luthor, the answers were innumerable. Quiet for longer than necessary, Lena sat up a little straighter and fixed her already neat and orderly desk.

“Send them in,” Lena nodded. “And call Mr. Ellis to prepare the helicopter, or I’ll never make it there and back in decent time.”

Jess nodded and moved back toward the reception area as Lena looked through the window at the afternoon. The rain cleared, but the clouds didn’t feel the same urgency to disappear, hanging about, grumpy and thick and ready to burst again. The clouds marched along quickly with the wind off the lake ushering in the afternoon.

A boring Tuesday, and nearly over.

The two agents took a seat in their crisp suits, badges flashed to make it official as they greeted the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company. Lena listened to their questions and tried to think of what it was about because surely there was a reason that they were there that they weren’t saying. There was simply no way that any government agency could be worried about her welfare, not when her family actively tried to dismantle the world and attack a group that were recently given protections under law– a movement Lena fully supported.

But, like every other meeting of her day, she nodded her way through it, her thoughts working in overtime to work a few moves ahead of the present problem.

With a naturally caustic wit, Lena dismissed the concern of the US government, and let her assistant interrupt to remind her that she was going to be late. When the suits persisted, Lena sighed. It was a normal Tuesday, after all.

“I appreciate your concern, but I have a team of security guards. I live in a bulletproof box with a panic room. I can’t spend my life afraid because you get death threats. I’m sure I have more than anyone else.”

The agents tried to interrupt and failed.

“Thank you for stopping by though. I am going to be late for a very important event though.”

“Ms. Luthor, this is serious,” the first one explained desperately.

“Life or death, I guess,” she smiled. “Thank you gentlemen. I’m sure I’ll see you sleuthing about sooner or later.”

It was a Tuesday, a normal, dingy Tuesday, with nothing particularly interesting happening, even with an impromptu visit from the FBI. Lena mulled it over as she climbed out of the elevator that took her to the helipad atop her building.

Lena almost made it to the factory.

But it was the Tuesday, she just didn’t know it yet.

The alien or person or thing, it made the helicopter lurch and twirl. Lena braced herself, and she did not remember screaming, though she might have. The lights began to flash and the warning bells chimed as the helicopter began to spin, sparks flying from the panel.

When she came to, she was certain she’d died. She remembered the flash of blue and red and she remembered the feeling of stillness, but it came with a flash against her head, a pain just above her eye and then nothing.

It was on a Tuesday, a random, regular Tuesday, that Lena Luthor almost died.

“You’re safe now, Ms. Luthor,” the voice explained, caring and warm and sweet.

Blood dripped into her eyes and Lena coughed through the smoke, but as she started to put together her bearings, she clutched her ribs and winced at the new pain that entered her. The pilot grumbled and coughed, slung low in his seatbelt, but alive somehow.

A hand on her shoulder made Lena look toward the door that’d somehow disappeared. Framed in golden sun that peaked through the clouds, she was tall and beautiful and had eyes that felt like… like… like something Lena couldn’t figure out because there was blood in her vision and mouth and her head was throbbing.

“Wow,” Supergirl whispered and swallowed.

“I didn’t… What happened?”

“You were attacked, but you’re safe now.”

There were sirens coming from somewhere, but all noise was a jumble in Lena’s head, and she winced again.

“Thank you.”

It was a Tuesday when Supergirl smiled at her and nodded and took a step back before shooting into the sky, and Lena swallowed as best she could, her mouth full of smoke and dirt and blood, and she knew that things were different.


End file.
